Science fiction crime novels

I win the ‘My First Podcast’ badge!

I’ll make you a bet: my spoken voice is probably nothing like you ever imagined if you’ve read my books, or even just read a few thousand words on here or in a workshop. None of my characters talk like me…you’ll probably be thankful for that if you listen to this!

When I woke up this morning knowing this would be live, I had to force myself to eat breakfast and have 2 cups of coffee before I listened to it. I almost always talk too fast. If I ever got the writer’s insecurity about my work, trust me when I tell you it was worse this time as I hoped I hadn’t said anything that would haunt me for the rest of my fiction writing life.

I was so relieved to sound sane and level headed when I played this to myself. Okay, as close to that as I ever get when you get my talking about fiction. Not that Nadine expressly asked me not to, but I didn’t even curse during the whole interview (at least not a majorly…let’s call it a PG podcast); I wanted this to reach a wide audience. I’m so relieved I didn’t fu…. err, mess this up completely that I’m sharing it hot off the press. Nothing like spending bank holiday Monday in bed listening to MYSELF talk about fiction over coffee. This is the most fabulous narcissism I think I’ve ever indulged in.

We recorded this on the 6th July. We had one hour to get it done so we could both go and watch Wales play football in the Euro Cup…shock horror, an author had to try not to talk too much about his books…

We got there with five minutes to spare before kickoff. I still felt like I failed.

And before some of you ask, yeah, I was sober when I recorded this! If you don’t count the bottle of Asahi I had on to go to keep my voice from going dry. So sue me. I’m usually a wine drinker, but the long cool taste of sushi-bar beer got me through that podcast. If it’s not too early in your timezone, crack a bottle of something open and tune in.